Site Mobile Navigation

Ruling Spurs Rush for Cash in Both Parties

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader in the House, wasted little time on Thursday blasting the Supreme Court’s latest decision freeing donors to spend more money on campaigns. The founding fathers, Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference on Thursday morning, had fought for “a government of the many, not a government of the money.” Democrats, she said, will not “unilaterally disarm.”

Indeed, her fund-raisers had already begun to exploit the new ruling. That morning, Ms. Pelosi’s political team began asking donors for tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of additional contributions permitted by the decision, while circulating a legal memorandum to donors who had questions about the new rules, according to Pelosi supporters.

As constitutional scholars digest the court’s decision, it has already set off a bipartisan scramble for campaign cash, thrusting party leaders, lawmakers with leadership PACs, and candidates into a fierce competition.

The ruling allows donors to make the maximum contribution to an unlimited number of campaigns, freeing donors from caps that required them to pick and prioritize from among each party’s candidates and national committees. And while the decision could inject tens of millions of additional dollars into the 2014 races, it has also left some candidates and party leaders with a new concern: that the biggest donors will get tired of writing new checks.

Ray Washburne, the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, said that he was on a flight to Chicago when the Supreme Court decision came down on Wednesday, with appointments to visit two top party donors who had “maxed out” under the old cap.

“When I landed, I said, ‘Eureka!’” Mr. Washburne recalled. He left the meetings with new donations to the committee from both people, he said.

The decision is quickly upending the usual hierarchy in midterm elections, when big donors tend to give first to House or Senate candidates and campaign committees, leaving them unable to “max out” to the Republican and Democratic National Committees. Fund-raisers and donors in both parties said they had begun to get a wave of tentative and not-so-tentative requests for new checks or future commitments, as the leaders of the parties’ congressional wings compete with each other and with the Republican and Democratic National Committees.

All are focusing on a relatively limited group of donors in both parties who appeared to have given the maximum allowed or come close to the old cap — the people most likely to write additional checks after Wednesday’s decision. Some donors and lobbyists said they had received emails from fund-raisers minutes after the decision became public.

A few said they were likely to give more despite their disagreement with the court’s decision.

“Undoubtedly, I will give more to individual candidates, and less through ‘super PACs’ or other organizations,” said David DesJardins, a top Democratic donor. “I get a louder megaphone, but why should people like me have the biggest megaphone?”

The court’s ruling has already begun to scramble the map of congressional battleground races: Without the caps, party leaders can direct donors to send additional checks to second- and third-tier candidates without worrying that it will deprive first-tier candidates of badly needed money.

Photo

Fund-raisers for Representative Nancy Pelosi quickly began exploiting a Supreme Court ruling.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

“This allows donors to take a flier on what may have seemed like less competitive races before,” said Scott Drexel, a Democratic political consultant based in California.

A similar dynamic is likely to unfold in 2016. Under the old caps, each party’s premier donors had to choose between House and Senate races and the presidential campaign. Now donors can give the maximum in all three areas.

In the short term, the ruling also gives high-ranking lawmakers a chance to ask donors for additional contributions to leadership PACs and joint fund-raising vehicles. Some of the early requests from Ms. Pelosi’s fund-raisers have been for donations for the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund, a joint fund-raising committee between Ms. Pelosi’s leadership PAC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Pelosi supporters said.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

A representative of the Democratic committee said that officials there had made only a handful of requests for donations, but had circulated the legal memo more widely to supporters who asked for clarification on the ruling.

“We’re going to play by the same rules as the Republicans,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the campaign committee. “We do not like those rules now, and we will seek to change those rules when we are in the majority. The only way we can get into the majority is if we have the resources we need to win elections.”

It is not yet clear which party will benefit most from the ruling. Until Wednesday, no donor could give more than $123,200 worth of contributions in federal elections during the 2014 cycle. A 2013 paper by Adam Bonica, a Stanford professor, and Jenny Shen, a lawyer, estimated that as many as 1,800 donors might have exceeded that “aggregate limit” during the 2012 election.

That number is almost certainly inflated because federal campaign finance records lack a way to uniquely identify individual donors. But more of those identified by the authors had given to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign than to President Obama’s campaign.

Mr. Israel, however, said he thought the influx of new money would end in a wash between House Democrats and Republicans. Other Democrats said it was too soon to tell if the decision would translate into a big financial disadvantage for them this year.

“Nobody knows which party is going to benefit most in 2014,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, one of the Democrats’ top fund-raisers. “That is a $123,000 question: Which side has more donors who are willing to keep giving above that amount. Nobody really knows the answer.”

Within each party, however, the earliest beneficiaries are likely to be senior lawmakers like Ms. Pelosi and Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, who are wired to their party’s top donors, as well as the two national party committees, which typically struggle more to raise money in a year with no presidential election. The Democratic National Committee reported debts of $15.2 million at the end of February. Its Republican counterpart, while more flush with cash, helped bankroll the lawsuit that led to Wednesday’s 5-to-4 decision in the Supreme Court case, McCutcheon vs. F.E.C.

“This decision is horrible,” said one top fund-raiser for the Democratic committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the party. “And we will try to find some not too tacky way to check in with the folks who had already maxed out to the congressional committees.”

Derek Willis contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on April 5, 2014, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ruling Spurs Rush for Cash in Both Parties. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe